


A Taste of Java

by brutti_ma_buoni



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Community: spnkink_meme, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Second Chances, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:26:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt of awesome: Generally mates are for life, and people rarely take a second one if their first dies. Character A and Character B both lost their mates a while back. They meet each other at a meeting for grieving spouses and warm up to each other, and finally they decide that a lackluster mateship together is better than living things out alone. And yeah, it's not the same as what either of them had before, but it's more than they expected it be. Potential pairings: J2 or any combination of Jared, Jensen, Gen, Adrianne, or Julie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Taste of Java

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't tagged for character death as it all precedes this fic. But: real people died fictitious deaths to make this fic possible - previous J2, Gen/Julie

It's the day they run out of coffee that Jared really works his life out. He doesn't even care about good coffee, not like Gen, but habit insists that there be hot brown liquid consumed at this hour, and he's scrabbling through the cabinets looking for some hoped-for crappy forgotten instant stuff which will get Gen vertical and pacing.

He remembers.

*

Jensen lived on coffee. Always, always with hot beverage in hand as he hit the streets sometime between nine and noon. Grumpy and complaining, and with his hair all wrong till the requisite amount of caffeine had been consumed, when magically, the perfect hair would be achieved. Jensen thought Jared, sunny morning person, was some kind of alien.

And yet, they loved each other. A hell of a lot.

Jared smiles, remembering the ten good years. It's easier now, to think of all the time they had together, and not immediately flash into the ten minutes that took Jensen away. He'll never forget that part, but perhaps now it's less important than what came before.

*

The coffee at the bereavement group was awful. Little plastic cups, too thin to hold comfortably, prone to spilling, so the beverage table was always sticky. Teensy plastic spoons, too, too small to stir effectively, and everyone complained, especially about the batch that splintered. Something tiny, within their compass. Something that was safe to talk about. Unlike: death. Unlike: grief. Unlike: loneliness. Unlike: gone.

Jared and Gen, though, had their first bonding moment over the bad-coffee bitching sessions. One of Gen's best features is her ability to just _let it go_ when the complaining tips into plain ol' whining. Jared saw it, the day she started to giggle when Donny began the day's Lamentation of Spoons. She caught Jared's eye just as the giggles rose, and flailed a hand at him. A silent _help me, he's not a bad person but I CANNOT have the spoon conversation again_. And Jared did. He can't remember what they talked about; nothing substantial for sure. Just, it was the first time in months that he'd talked to someone about something other than Jensen, and had felt okay about it. The stifled laughter just… freed. Hands painfully clasped round the flimsy cups of bad, bad coffee, they'd talked till they knew they could be friends. It was the start.

*

It was over coffee that Gen asked him to marry her. Better coffee. Good stuff at Valentino's restaurant, on the day that should have been Jared's ninth wedding anniversary. Gen understood why he'd want to be out for that. Not at home, with photos and memories, and the absence of Jensen. He'd done the same for her, two years after Julie's death, with cocktails and nachos and things that Julie loved and Gen wanted to remember, instead of her gorgeous girl eaten up by disease in long, aching months that took everything from them, too slow and too fast and never stopping.

So there was no apology in having that evening together. None. Jared wasn't even surprised when Gen started to make it more.

"I'm lonely. You're lonely. We're pretty good friends, aren't we?"

Sure. Male alpha, female beta, mourning a male omega and a female alpha, understanding and friendly. No spark. And what Gen was gently working up to needed a spark.

Didn't it? Jared remembers now, looking into his espresso cup, seeking an answer. Thinking of how Jensen used to make his heart pound just by the turn of his head or the sound of his step. How bonding and marriage were no brainers that required no consultation in coffee grounds – who'd ever, ever want to give this up? He remembers, too, how Gen's hand came to rest over his. Because she'd had that too.

"It'll never be the same. But I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life. Is that something you can share?"

He'd never been sure. But it was worth a shot.

*

She tasted of coffee when he kissed her properly for the first time. After their wedding, in her pretty blue suit. After the nice meal with good friends to celebrate. Nothing too bridal. Nothing too romantic. This wasn't about young hopes and open hearts. Just friendship and settling.

Everybody knew it. Loved them, hoped for the best, but there were no cosy jokes at the wedding. Nobody made the one about, "Better kiss the bridesmaids, cuz you won't be kissing anyone else after today. Ever!" (Chad had actually said that, when Jared and Jensen exchanged vows. Not this time.)

Jared's mouth had felt all wrong on Gen's. She was too small, too soft, too beta and blah. _I made a mistake_ , he thought, horrified. Until that moment, her complete un-Jensenness had been in her favour. But this?

He felt Gen stiffen at the same time, spared a thought for slender, laughing Julie. He must have more than a hundred pounds on Julie, even before she got sick. Miles taller too. Even the familiar alpha-ness probably didn't make up for the fact that every other damn thing was different.

 _God, how will we ever have sex?_ It flittered through Jared's brain, as their lips broke their hold. They looked, soberly, at one another, close-quarters and all too aware of the audience of loved ones. _We could call it off_ , he had thought, and he knows now that Gen was thinking the exact same thing. Annulment was made for times like this. No one would have blamed them. They were creatures of grief and loss. Everyone made allowances.

All of that passed through Jared's consciousness in the space of a breath. Because, no. Time to move on. No more allowances. "Okay," he murmured, as Gen said, "Yep," and neither of them had to explain.

They kissed again. It worked. No fireworks and heavenly choirs, but mouth on mouth, learning the way things would be.

There was a small suppressed whoop from an attendee (Chad, presumably), and a loud, "Shhh!" from another (Gen's Aunt Marcie, without a doubt). When Jared and Gen broke apart, everyone was smiling.

So that was okay.

*

Gen tasted of coffee the first time they had sex too. Not espresso this time. Booze. She had drunk three Black Russians while Jared teased the hell out of her for the total unclassiness. To which, eventually, she had responded, leaving go of her drinking straw for a precious second. "Sex on a beach, Padalecki. First night of the honeymoon, and you ordered sex on a beach. I think we know who knows about class in this marriage." Then she went back to drinking like a pro.

It was the seventh, and last, night of their honeymoon. Tonight needed to be the night. They'd spent long enough recovering from the wedding, recovering from the flight, recovering from the dubious pork dish on the second day, recovering from the skydiving (because, Jesus, Jared married an insane woman who is scared of heights and jumps out of aeroplanes anyway, because it's a honeymoon thing), recovering from the weirdness of sharing a bed with a person you don't – in the end – know too well.

They needed to fuck, before real life took over and they fell into being a couple that didn't. It would always be a thing, if they did that, and Jared didn't want to live that way. It was just, the night before, when it all went wrong, that was weighing on him. And Gen, evidently, as she ordered a fourth cocktail. Jared wasn't drinking. Not after the night before. An hour of making out, and he'd been barely hard enough to try to persuade his dick inside Gen. Who, in turn, had been barely wet enough to make it an option. A miserable, silent shuffling and fumbling time later, Jared was definitively limp, and Gen was curling her knees up, rolling away, pulling on her sleep tee without a word. A lawyer might, just, have argued that their marriage had been consummated, but that wasn't something either of them would ever want to claim.

So, it was kind of a last chance saloon situation, when Jared reached over to Gen's glass as she laughed at his past cocktail shame. He took a huge gulp of the sickly coffee flavoured mix, handed Gen back the remains of her drink, and swept her up into his arms. "Time to get a little alpha on you, Mrs Padalecki." Their room wasn't close, but he was strong, she was tiny, and this was something they could do differently. New.

They kissed along the way. Gen's empty glass was discarded on a convenient hallway table. "No coaster! Aunt Marcie would be horrified," Gen laughed into Jared's neck. Then turned to kissing the skin within her reach. A little bitey, definitively female, and absolutely Gen.

In the dimness of their bedroom, he went down on her immediately, generous wet mouth meeting her first faint signs of arousal. Woman on his tongue, and she was stirring with purpose, and getting herself off against his mouth, enough that his large fingers slid inside her easily after a while, opening the way for himself, reminding himself it was _possible_ , and _familiar_ and that three years of celibacy didn't mean you lost the ability forever.

It was quick, and fumbly, and she didn't come until after, when he slipped out of her, kissed her fingers, and said, "Show me what makes you feel good?" Learned the feel of her as she stroked herself to a quiet climax.

"Just like riding a bike," she said, with a smile on her lips but a wobble in her voice, and he suddenly understood that she'd maybe not even touched herself since Julie died, or not often. That grief had deadened her enough that even this basic comfort hadn't been available. That last night's disaster hadn't only been about their incompatibility. Some little tight-wound worry relaxed a little.

"Firstly, I resent that you're calling me a bicycle. Or you, whichever. We Padaleckis are exclusive sports vehicles or nothing." He couldn't help but add a little snicker in there. "Secondly, duh. We're just a little rusty, is all."

"Yeah," was all she said, and cuddled down into him. "I haven't brushed my teeth, but I don't want to move."

"I could never love a woman with poor dental hygiene," he said, sadly, and in the revenge-consequences that followed, almost missed the thought that it was the first time either of them said anything at all about love.

*

More than a year now, and Jared knows Gen a hell of a lot better. Her dental hygiene is excellent. Her sense of adventure is out of all proportion to her physical capabilities and occasional deep phobias, but he likes that she keeps on trying. Her cooking is marginally worse than his, except for pasta, which she makes from scratch without disaster, in a series of manoeuvres that Jared has now seen many times yet never quite believes.

And she really deserves better coffee than the crappy decaf at the back of the cabinet which is all Jared's searching has found. He runs down to the car, and sets off on a coffee quest.

This, he used to do for Jensen.

Despite the coffee fetish they had in common, Gen isn't his golden boy, his omega-across-a-crowded-campus, see him once, love him forever. She's not the guy Jared loved so much he used to wake up at night smiling into darkness at the sheer _lucky_ of his life. She's second best. So is he.

But that's okay. She makes his life better. He's pretty sure it's mutual.

When he comes back home, with a venti latte cooling too fast in his hand, and a bag of French roast ready for the next essential hit, Jared finds Gen mostly awake.

"We're out of coffee," he says.

"I want a divorce," she returns. "Unless you went out and brought me an extra foam venti latte in which case I adore you and you're the best husband ever."

He passes her the coffee. "It's getting a little cold."

She inhales a quarter of the cup in one. Pauses. Wiggles her flat hand. "Eh. Not bad. Second, maybe third best husband ever."

They kiss. Coffee breath and morning breath (even on a woman with excellent dental hygiene), and Jared doesn't really care. He's realised something important today. This is really, really, real. And he's happy about that.

"Gen?"

She's still communing with the latte, but she catches his tone. Something new, something serious perhaps – but not something bad. She's questioning, but smiling, with her eyes.

"You know we said… someday we'd like to…" He finds it harder than expected to say it, and ends up blurting. "We both want a family. Let's make one?"

They're not the right words – not tender ones of love, nor an attempt to explain exactly what he's feeling today. And they're a family already, kind of. Wasn't that the point of getting together? Gen may not be where he is. It's been a year, they haven't talked about this since before the wedding. It never felt like the right time. Maybe he shouldn't-

He's silent, fretting, and not looking at his wife, when one of her hands covers his. "Really?" It's a happy voice, with a little quaver, like Gen knows exactly what this means to Jared. Like wherever he is, she's in that ballpark too. He meets her eyes, and there's a little click. This is them, together.

Jared kisses his wife. She tastes of coffee. Of course she does.

"Want to make a baby?" He says. "You can finish your latte first."

She does. They do. It's not always perfect and shining and simple and romantic and destined.

But it's all good.

***


End file.
